Bathing in the expected unanimous endorsement of the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee, Gov. Tom Corbett delivered a pragmatic acceptance speech Saturday touting his fiscal management and avoiding social issues that have landed him in hot water in the past......

But the unanimous endorse masked what one dissenter described as "a Tsunami of discontent" within state GOP ranks.

Montgomery County tea party activist Bob Guzzardi, who lingered outside of the main hall, is Corbett's sole challenger for the party nomination.

Guzzardi acknowledged he is a dark horse in the race and even admitted he didn't expect to be included in any pre-primary polls.

But he argued that he would get enough petitions to be on the GOP primary ballot (May 20th), and would then tap into the discord within the party that has seen nearly half of commonwealth Republicans claim they'd rather see a different gubernatorial nominee.

"Once I get on the ballot I think my chances of winnig the nomination are very good because every one of the polls show he can't beat any Democrat," he said.....

During his acceptance speech, he (Corbett) addressed the anti-tax faction of the GOP that disagreed with the tax hikes he instituted to pay for the $2.4 billion dollar transportation package.

"I know that some of you weren't happy with the recent transportation bill," the governor said. "I didn't campaign on that....

"And I looked at it as 1.5 million children get on 31,000 school buses every school day, crossing 10,000 miles of roads that need to be repaired and across approximately 6,000 bridges that were structurally deficient," he added.

"If that isn't reason to get revenue to fix those roads and bridges, you and I are never going to agree," Corbett said to a smattering of applause. "It was important."

Republican Governor Tom Corbett just dropped a gas tax bomb on Pennsylvania in December with a 28 cent a gallon bipartisan approved "transporation funding bill".

It will go to the construction companies and labor unions that support Republican and Democrat politicans in this state.

INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS=LINING THE POCKETS OF CRONIES

Corbett actually is quoted in the story as saying he did this tax hike for the sake of children and safety, the kind of talking points we'd expect from Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi.

And he expects me to vote for his re-election in the primary this May and the general election in November.

My a**........

A recent poll showed only 42 percent of Republican voters ready to support RINO Corbett in the primary with 35 percent undecided and 23 percent ready to support Bob Guzzardi, who's unknown outside of conservative activist circles in PA.

An incumbent governor who's only got 42 percent support in his own party for the primary looks like he's in pretty bad shape politically.

Corbett is yet another in a long line of liberal Republican governors. Dems and their union allies have strongholds in the state's major cities and the Republicans figure their only chance is to produce candidates that are just like the Democrats. This is why real conservatives don't have a chance in this state. The local party won't embrace them.

And it's this same thinking that has extended to the national level. If conservatives want to control both houses of congress and the White House, their only chance is to form a third party.

Does that include Allyson Schwartz? Because unless a viable Republican candidate runs against Corbett and beats him in the primary, the choices are Corbett or Schwartz.

PA Republicans have had three years to come up with an alternate candidate so as to get rid of Corbett. That Guzzardi nobody is the best they could find? If that’s the case, I guess PA Republicans need to suck it up and vote for Corbett again, or else ultraliberal Governor Schwartz will make Corbett and his 28-cent gas tax look like President Reagan slashing the income-tax rates.

“If that isn’t reason to get revenue to fix those roads and bridges, you and I are never going to agree,”

That quote is what I despise about politicians. What are they doing with the current 42 cents per gallon tax revenue that they already collect? That is already supposed to pay for roads and bridges. Will they start taxing bicycles and skateboards? It never ends. They already tax more than enough to pay for roads and bridges. The problem is that the money rarely ever goes to fix roads and bridges. They use it to line the pockets of union mass transit pensions. Roads and bridges should last hundreds of years, yet the state claims they need billions of dollars every year just to maintain them. I say bull$hit!

There is no excuse to continue to put up with the business as usual politics or politicians in Harrisburg.

Corbett speaks of “pension reform” this year.

That RINO legislature you write about isn’t budging on that one...

Neither are they on state store reform or property tax reform.

The tea party groups backed a bill to eliminate property taxes and it was countered by a phony RINO bill to give the local school boards the ability to impose additional taxes on sales and income.

RINO’s need replacement at all levels and in my county, three conservative candidates are running in three House districts, plus one in a State Senate district.

By the way, do you support the efforts of the Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania in backing replacements for RINO’s in the legislature?

His “fighting” for things is good political show, but the Obama Administration (EPA) and the federal courts will make his “fighting” nought with their actions.

One other thought, I listen to the folks in the lunchrooms and water coolers. The madness that elected Kathleen Kane as AG two years ago from Penn State fans is ready, willing and able to boot Tom Corbett out and its no wonder his re-elect numbers are so low and Democrats lead him in the polls.

Schwartz will not have a Democrat legislature most likely so she would have a check on her agenda if the RINO’s are willing to check her.

She hasn’t won her primary yet. One guy who’s running against her is putting ten million of his own money plus three million from others into the campaign. He has 13 million and is on TV already while Schwartz only has 6 and a half million.

Let’s say that Schwartz doesn’t win the RAT nomination (I think that she will, but whatever). In that case, unless a viable Republican candidate beats Corbett in the GOP primary, the choice in November will be between Corbett and someone just as liberal on economic issues as Schwartz. And do you think that the GOP state legislature will be able to pass any tax cuts over the Democrat governor’s veto?

Either take out Corbett in the primary with a candidate who can win the general (he certainly can be more conservative than Corbett, but he can’t be some nobody with no record), or else support Corbett in the general; otherwise, a liberal Democrat will be governor.

Corbett got 54% in 2010 (running 3% ahead of Pat Toomey), and he also won a majority (as AG) in 2004 and 2008. I’ll take him over a nobody like Guzzardi, irrespective of what recent polls (that oversample Democrats) say; it is way too early to call someone who won big four years ago as “unelectable.” The fact that Guzzardi is an “outsider” does not mean that he won’t suck as a candidate (and the fact that he’s never run in an election before, and has a résumé that would be fine for a state senate candidate but underwhelming for a gubernatorial candidate, makes me think that’s probably the case). But if Guzzardi somehow earns the nomination, all conservatives and Republicans should support him, and I hope I’m wrong about his viability in the general.

BTW, filing doesn’t close until March 11, so if Corbett is toast as you claim there’s still time to recruit a top-tier candidate to hold the governorship. Congressman Jim Gerlach (who is retiring) comes immediately to mind, as do Congressmen Mike Kelly and Mike Fitzpatrick. Heck, give Lynn Swann another chance. But a nearly 70-year-old political neophyte without a particularly compelling story to tell does not sound promising.

And as for the morons who voted for Kane for AG over Republican David Freed due to some parochial issue, I hope that they’re happy with Kane joining the suit to overturn PA’s law that limits marriage to one man and one woman, and building her résumé for a 2016 run against Senator Pat Toomey. Conservatives who voted for a liberal like Kane over the GOP AG nominee Freed were idiots; they had the chance to nominate someone more to their liking in the primary, but didn’t even run anyone else, and once the primary was over, they weren’t going to get Ed Meese as AG, they were going to get either Freed or Kane, and Kane was by far the more liberal of the two.

Pat Toomey is the most conservative U.S. Senator from PA since at least the 1950s (and probably longer). You’re correct that he’s not perfect, but he’s leagues better than Kane or Sestak. But, hey, to each his own.

You would seriously think that a senator from Pennsylvania would watch his back on the Second Amendment for his political survival, much less the principle involved.

But Senator Toomey proved himself to not be very principled in the aftermath of an insane person’s act of mass murder in Connecticut.

He ran scared in the face of Bloomberg’s emotional ad campaign and the only concession he made was to not have Chuck Schumer in the room when he was in the room to announce his anti-Second Amendment amendment.

My definition of “conservative” and the oath of office for a US Senator includes the phase “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” including its Second Amendment. Toomey failed his very oath of office by his actions in sponsoring and voting for the anti-Second Amendment amendment.

While I didn’t like Toomey’s bill one iota, given the possibility of the federal government abusing its new authority and the impracticality of forcing people who don’t normally sell firearms to have to pay for background checks, but it’s not as if he was pushing the Brady Bill or something like that.

I think that you’ll find that, when Toomey’s seat comes up in 2016, he won’t have any Republican with a better record than him run for the nomination (although there might be some with *no* record, who of course will claim that they’re batting 1.000, not batting .000).

If you start sitting out elections when you don’t get a Joe Pitts on the ballot (I’m assuming that you find Pitts’s voting record acceptable, although chances are that he has cast at least one vote at some point in his close to 20 years in Congress with which you’ve disagreed), you’re going to sit out *a lot* of elections, particularly in PA. Let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good. Mike Fitzpatrick is not perfect, but he’s FAR better than his RINO predecessor Jim Greenwood (not to mention than Patrick Murphy, whose brief time in office Fitzpatrick has bookended). Could Fitzpatrick be a bit better on environmental issues? Sure, but the odds of electing a pro-development Republican in Bucks County who also is as pro-life, pro-gun, pro-marriage and pro-tax cuts as Fitzpatrick is not very high. A better target to go after would be the pro-abortion Charlie Dent in the Lehigh Valley’s PA-15, but it has to be someone with the sort of background that will allow him to be elected to Congress in such district.

I see 95 percent of Republican elected officials faking conservatism or repudiating it ala Charlie Dent.

The Murray-Ryan budget deal last month found no Pennsylvania House Republican in opposition (all for it even Keith Rothfus) to the new tax bill (fees for air travel) that also cut military pensions and extended unemployment benefits.

This bill was opposed by the Tea Party ones who oppose Boehner along with others who are running for US Senate in their various states. It was also opposed by the Democrat progressive Leftists of the Congressional Black Caucus and such.

These budget deals are not the way forward and they resemble European style austerity measures to manage debt.

I suspect that’s all that Washington has in store for us and alongside higher taxes and military cuts we get emotional politics about Obamacare from the GOP that intends to amend it, not end it and from the Democrats emotional arguments about a higher minimum wage so they can divert attention from all the welfare cuts they have to implement to satisfy the creditors of the United States of America.

"And I looked at it as 1.5 million children get on 31,000 school buses every school day, crossing 10,000 miles of roads that need to be repaired and across approximately 6,000 bridges that were structurally deficient," he added.

Just. Doesn't. Get. It.

This is the standard "crumbling schools / bridges / highways / etc." theme that Democrats play every time they want to gouge the taxpayers. Pennsylvania taxpayers already pay more than enough to fix this stuff. It's disheartening to see alleged Republicans falling for this nonsense, and almost certainly it means there is major hand-greasing going on.

24
posted on 02/03/2014 6:05:53 PM PST
by denydenydeny
(Admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt one has for others.-Tocqueville)

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.